Planning and Infrastructure Bill

John Grady Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As a Glasgow MP, I emphasise how important this Bill is for Scotland and Scotland’s economy. We have huge opportunities in the form of offshore wind and floating wind, but those opportunities depend on the development of transmission infrastructure in England. This Bill will help to reduce bills in Scotland by getting us away from expensive gas and on to cheaper fixed-price wind. Delays in England cost my poor constituents a lot of money.

The Bill does much more than that. It modernises the regime for connections to the electricity transmission and distribution system, speeding up the connection of vital energy projects for energy security. The UK Government have worked closely with the Scottish Government—delivering on their promise to put country first and Scotland first, and party second—to modernise the regime for consenting overhead power lines and generating stations in Scotland.

The Bill also makes provision for long-duration energy storage. The House may wonder what that is. There is all sorts of exciting new technology in this area, but I commend to everyone a visit to Cruachan power station to see the hollow mountain in the glens of Scotland. They will see how important it is and what great opportunities it provides for British engineering, and for the children in our schools to pursue careers in engineering. There are also other reforms that are important to the electricity sector in Scotland.

This may be a historic moment of some agreement between the SNP and the Labour party in this Chamber, but I would not want to be too gentle on the SNP Scottish Government, which takes far too long to consent projects in Scotland. Far too many projects sit on Ministers’ desks for far too long, and that is holding back investment. The same applies with the SNP council in Glasgow. We need to get going on some of these consents, and the SNP in Glasgow and Edinburgh need to get a move on with consenting projects that will create jobs and assist my constituents.

This is a great Bill. It looks to the future. It will create opportunities for Britain. It is a bill of aspiration and ambition for our country. For too long, we have kept on saying no to great developments that create jobs and create wealth. This Bill says, “Let’s go for it. Let’s create jobs. Let’s create investment.” I support it fully.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

We now come to the Front Benchers for the wind-ups.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)

John Grady Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)]

I was a local councillor until I resigned last May, but I am not sure whether I need to declare that. I am a vice president of the Local Government Association, which will be relevant for the panel this afternoon.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Until the general election I, too, was a solicitor and I had a practice for many years in the energy sector.

[The Chair]

I thank all Members for declaring their interests, which have been noted.

Examination of Witnesses

Robbie Owen and Sir John Armitt gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Shanks]

Finally, Dhara, picking up on the questions on connections reform and the wider push in the Bill on how we build network infrastructure more quickly and the ambition of that, how critical is it to the broader energy space—particularly on the questions of energy security, bringing down bills and the wider space on our energy mix going forward—that we build more network infrastructure and get the grid working? How critical is that aspect to delivering in the 2020s, and in the 2030s in particular, to meet the demand that we are going to see, and the Government’s other objective of bringing down bills?

Dhara Vyas: That is absolutely the right question to be asking, because we will not achieve any of it unless we unblock the issues we are seeing within the infrastructure space. The reality is that with these so-called zombie projects, at least half of them are ready to move on to the next stage. In large part, that is down to the work that has been happening as part of the connections reform project. It is really important that we keep on moving with the momentum we have right now, because gaining planning permission and making progress through the new milestones that the National Energy System Operator has set out is the next big challenge for us.

We are in a really difficult position right now. Bills and debt owed by customers to energy suppliers are at a record high. We are still really feeling and living in the long shadow of the cost of living crisis, which was partly down to the energy security crisis following the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Investing in an abundance of clean power will be completely pointless unless we have the infrastructure to move it around the country, and unless we invest in clean power, we will not ultimately bring down bills to the extent that we need to. The other part of that is demand. We will see demand increase by at least sixfold. We are going to have electrification of our homes and our transport, which brings us back full circle to the need to be able to move the electricity around.

[John Grady]

Q I have a question for Christianna, Beatrice and Charlotte. To bring this to life, I am a Scottish MP, so if I am building a set of offshore wind farms in the north of Scotland, I also need to build transmission infrastructure from Scotland down to England. The holdouts of this involve connection queues, planning delays in Scotland and planning delays in England. The Bill, with the reforms in England and Scotland, seeks to reduce those delays. I want to unpick what that means for my constituents in terms of jobs and investment. How much money will be invested in the grid in Scotland over the next five to 10 years, because this Bill helps speed that investment up?

Christianna Logan: Our programme of projects to deliver for 2030 is a £22 billion investment. It is the biggest investment that we have seen in the north of Scotland probably since the second world war, so it is really significantyou’re your constituents. Our colleagues in ScottishPower have their investments in your area as well. Alongside that, there is a significant number of jobs—we expect around 6,000 jobs enabled through our investments in Scotland specifically. Just this year, we will be recruiting another 600 people into SSEN transmission to help with this transformation of our grid network.

All of that, as you say, is dependent on us getting consent to progress all these projects and the necessary regulatory approvals for the investments. We have been working very closely with Government and Ofgem on the reforms, and we believe that the proposals put forward in the Bill will take us forward in that regard. As I said earlier, the secondary legislation and the work with the Scottish Government will be critical to capturing those benefits.

[John Grady]

Q Charlotte, some of the projects you are doing rely on Scottish infrastructure. Is it the same in England: more jobs, more activity?

Charlotte Mitchell: Yes, more jobs and more activity. Picking up on the point about consenting, we have similar yet different challenges in England and Wales. As you note, the Bill looks to streamline the NSIP regime. That is incredibly important for us at National Grid. We are very supportive of the measures in the Bill, and there are three in particular that I would like to namecheck as helping us to accelerate the projects that we need to move that power around, as we have been discussing.

The first one is the commitment to refresh the national policy statements every five years, or more frequently. We really welcome that, because it is incredibly important that we have policy stability for our projects. I would just caution that we do not update them so frequently that the policy landscape moves, but five years feels like the right cadence for refreshing those.

Another measure in the Bill that will help is the ability to opt out of the NSIP regime, where that is more appropriate for particular projects. At National Grid, for example, sometimes when we are upgrading a substation we need to move some overhead lines around. You can trip that threshold and end up in the NSIP regime, where really that does not feel like the spirit of the regime—that is not what it was set up to do. The ability to write to the Secretary of State and explain why it is not the most appropriate regime is really helpful for us, and we really welcome that measure.

The third one was spoken about by the previous panel: yesterday’s announcement of looking again at the consultation requirements and moving to a non-statutory footing for consultation on NSIP projects. Again, that will help us to engage in a more targeted, effective and proportionate way, so that we can bring projects forward while continuing to engage communities. That will help us to ensure that we have the right projects in the right places.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Lewis Cocking]

Q How will that affect the timeframe? I suppose the Government want projects to happen quickly, but you are now saying that there is another process to go through, so can you explain how that will affect the timeframe of projects?

Beatrice Filkin: What we set out in the decision last week sets off the piece of work that NESO are doing over this year. That helps projects, because as we have talked about, there are a number of projects in the queue that are either nowhere near ready or are not deemed needed for the overall strategic plan. So the process of sorting through the queue will speed up that very constrained access to the network to enable those projects that are needed and ready to join and connect to the network earlier.

[John Grady]

Q I want to ask about coastal Scotland, and I declare an interest: my granddad and several of my cousins were trawlermen in Scotland. Offshore wind represents a big opportunity in Scotland for coastal communities and harbours, which have suffered economic decline over the years. Have I got that right?

Beatrice Filkin: Are you asking whether it provides an opportunity to local communities?

[John Grady]

Yes.

Beatrice Filkin: Absolutely. We see this in terms of not only the build process, but the operations of these pieces of infrastructure.

[John Grady]

Q So this Bill, which speeds up planning and consent for transmission and generation infrastructure, is really important for Scotland’s coastal communities. That must follow, mustn’t it?

Beatrice Filkin: Yes.

Christianna Logan: Investment in things like ports infrastructure comes directly as a result of the investment in these projects, and that investment is not secured until we achieve consents, whether that is networks or offshore wind as our customer. So absolutely there is a benefit. There is also the community benefit that will come as a result of these projects.

Beatrice Filkin: There are also the wider supply chain opportunities. Obviously, we want to see the international and UK supply chain relocating here and providing degrees of the supply chain directly for these projects from our home communities.

[The Chair]

As we have a bit more time, there is a last question from Amanda Martin.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting)

John Grady Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Gideon Amos]

Guidance?

Councillor Clewer: Yes. Pretty firm guidance, but still guidance, with the ability where you really have the nuance to be able to work around it.

Councillor Hug: It goes to the point about having a common core of things, with certain things that apply in certain areas but then a space for guidance on top of that.

Councillor Wright: I agree that it should be guidance, not mandatory. We always seem to see policy brought forward on the basis that there is a problem. Perhaps for once we could go out to where planning is actually done well—where authorities have gone through modernisation and done things in the way you would expect them to be done—and work with those authorities, instead of assuming that there is a problem in the planning system.

Also, how far will this delegation go? If it turns into nothing more than delegation that is almost similar to permitted development rights, if people think that that is not dangerous, they should look at a picture of Terminus House in Harlow. They would see somewhere where they would not want to live. Members were nowhere near that.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Q It is great to have three very experienced councillors before the Committee. We have heard evidence today, including from two former special advisers to No. 10 under the last Government, that the Bill will help with energy security and energy costs, driving forward housing and getting jobs and significant investment. To channel your discussion about the beam in the person’s house, Councillor Clewer, a significant amount of frustration was evinced about where we are with things in planning more generally. Could each of you identify what you see as positive in the Bill?

Councillor Clewer: I agree that there are areas at the moment where planning simply delays or blocks infrastructure provision. That needs changing; I absolutely agree with that. I suspect people will judge the extent to which it needs changing based on where they live and the specific infrastructure that they are facing, but I think that that needs unblocking.

You need to be very careful with the assumption that the Bill will build more houses. It will not build more houses. The Bill, and the reforms that we have seen to the NPPF, will see more planning permissions. I have 18,837 extant planning permissions in Wiltshire at the moment. Developers told me that they could build only about 6,000 the last time I asked them, which strangely enough was just under the four-year housing land supply under the last Government. I am sure that if I asked them today, they would say that they could build just about 8,000.

I have 2,400 houses south of Trowbridge that have been stuck, failing to get the section 106 agreement signed, for something like 14 years. There has to be something in the Bill that forces building. If we are to issue planning, it has to come with the actual development. We have to compel. If developers have signed a commitment that they will complete houses on whatever basis and have fallen behind, they need to start paying the council tax on them or something. At the moment, the Bill is not going to do that, I am afraid. I do not see anything in it that will actually achieve that.

Councillor Hug: I support Richard’s point about working for more “use it or lose it” powers to ensure that planning permission does not just go on the books to raise land value and not do much else, although I note the points about hope value and everything. We recognise that there is a whole heap of challenges to delivery that sit outside the scope of the Bill.

On the Bill, we support the Government’s general principles about clarification and simplification. We recognise that the strong national growth and infrastructure demands open up some of the opportunities for green energy and all sorts of other things that we are calling for in local government.

I want to draw attention to the work being done on planning fees. Ensuring that local authorities have the best possible remuneration for the work to make sure they are covering their costs fully is key to making the system work well to deliver the outcomes that you are looking for. But we recognise that that alone will not deal with it, so we have to look at how we can further strengthen the planning workforce. Again, that is about making sure that the language does not say that the planning system or the planners are the problem. We want people to go into the industry and we want them to do it, but the planning fee stuff is helpful in supporting that.

We support the principles, but the key thing is to ensure that the local authorities retain a voice in what goes forward and work with the Government on some of the practical things such as the scheme of delegations.

Councillor Wright: I think we have got close to it. As we said, we have nothing against the professional training of planning committees so that the industry knows what it is dealing with and so that the idea that we do not know what we are doing on planning committees cannot be used to beat us over the head all the time. In my district, similarly to Richard’s, 11,500 permissions were put in place between 2016 and 2024 and 5,500 were built out. There is no excuse for the rest not to be built.

Unfortunately, the proposals that have been put forward do not include anything at all to mandate that builders will build. There is a proposal over CPO powers, and the missing thing that we would like to see is “build it or lose it”. If there is an allocated site and they have permissions, but they simply do not build on it, give us the CPO powers so we can CPO that. That would help to build houses, because we could then start to control the destiny of those sites. At the moment, there are some really useful things that could have been in the Bill that are missing.

Councillor Clewer: But CPO it at agricultural value.

Councillor Wright: Yes: agricultural value, not hope value.

Councillor Hug: I very much support the planning training. The LGA supports the approach to hope value that the Government are taking. The CPO power is particularly being deployed in urban settings around land assembly, which is the intent behind the Bill.

[David Simmonds]

Q I have two connected questions. A lot has been said about the role of local authorities in decision making on planning. I am aware that councils are not short of planning guidance from central Government—every element of a local plan must already be in detailed conformity with 19 chapters of the national planning policy framework. Is there any element of your local planning process that is there for any other purpose than complying with the law, as passed by Parliament, in respect of planning? Have you gold plated locally?

Secondly, coming back to the point about strategic infrastructure projects, one of the issues is that local authorities have a lot of obligations, particularly under environmental law, whereby they have a specific legal duty around issues like air quality. Effectively excluding them from the decision-making process or even a failure to intervene in the process would leave them open to legal challenge. Air quality is a good example: I know from my experience at Heathrow airport that there was a local authority fine of £300 million per annum for the level of air quality breaches caused by Heathrow airport, through which we would have been judicially reviewed by ClientEarth had we not judicially reviewed central Government over their proposals to expand that.

Can you think of some other areas, around either environmental or other legal obligations, that are imposed on local authorities where the role you play in either the development and consent order process or those national strategic infrastructure projects is arising not simply out of local politics but because of legal obligations to your residents that you have to fulfil?

Councillor Wright: With regard to nationally significant infrastructure projects, for instance, I was thinking about the fact that we are responsible for the environmental impact assessments. I worry at times that we do not have enough weight with those when it comes to the actual decision making.

One example, which we are testing at the moment, relates to battery storage—a new thing that is exciting lots of people—and whether we can predict not just the here and now, but what would happen in the event of a problem. If we are going to have a huge array of batteries on what was good agricultural land suddenly blighting the landscape, we could ensure that the industry is not allowed to use a type of battery that is more prone to cause huge environmental issues if it catches fire, when there are already good batteries that could be used. But it comes down to a financial decision. In some places, we would actually like more weight to be given to the powers that we already have, but quite often, as you say, we find ourselves guarding the place but not being able to make the decisions that would avoid the need for guards in the first place.

Councillor Hug: My concern is not about gold plating. It is about the question whether local authorities across the country have the capacity on their planning teams to deal with the range and breadth of the requirements that are placed on them. That is one reason why local government reform is in the air, but I would also welcome some movement on fees. We have to make sure that planning is seen as a field that people want to go into, to help unlock these things, rather than these people being seen purely as the blockers. Ultimately, part of the blockage is that the system is not working effectively. The question is how we can work with local authorities to deliver not only training to communities, but greater support to the officer core so that they can move stuff through as quickly as possible.

Councillor Clewer: I do not think we gold plate our local plans. There are many councils that want to go beyond existing guidance, particularly on net zero, for example. That is mostly to stop expensive retrofitting in future and make people’s bills cheaper. There are areas where councils will want to go beyond existing national policy, but every example I can think of was done for a very good reason and will end up with broad public support.

On the bigger issue of legislation, yes, there are some real challenges. Some environmental legislation can be significantly challenging when you want to see building or when you are looking to find a way to mitigate or even unlock. For example, I have a brownfield site in Trowbridge where they need to leave a bat corridor by a train line. How on earth that makes sense I honestly do not know, but it is making the viability of the site really challenging. Some sort of off-site provision would be far more appropriate: it would be far better for the bats and would help to unlock development.

There are also problems around highways issues, for example. Whether it be for economic development or building land, there is an inability for us to work properly with National Highways to deal with motorway junctions, or the A36 in my case. The constraints that that places on us can be real blockers to our desire to build in areas that would be sensible, as opposed to in areas where developers are putting forward planning permissions.

Lastly, it would be really nice if we could tell developers where they should be building, rather than developers saying, “This bit of land? We can’t build on it yet,” when we know full well that we will get a speculative application the moment the local plan is through for that bit of land as well, having just fought the contentious bit of land.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have just over a minute, John Grady, so it will have to be a very quick question and answer.

[John Grady]

Q I have a quick final question. We need huge investment in infrastructure in the United Kingdom. The capital for that is international, so we need to attract international investors to fund this investment. In your professional view, does the Bill make us more attractive or less attractive to international investors?

Catherine Howard: It definitely makes us more attractive to international investors on the nationally significant infrastructure side. I also like the fact that we can now opt out of the DCO regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects, because sometimes it is lighter touch and more helpful to go local. That is helpful as well. As I say, the pre-app stuff is incredibly helpful, and the national policy stuff. The EDP stuff is helpful, and the nature recovery matters in relation to housing. I will flag, however, that I will be making a submission about how I think the Bill could go a bit further on habitats regulation matters with regard to nationally significant infrastructure, because the nature recovery plans are slightly harder to apply—

[The Chair]

Order. We have run out of the available time for questions in this session. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you for your evidence.

Examination of witnesses

Richard Benwell, Mike Seddon and Carol Hawkey gave evidence.